Lighthouse Properties p.l.c. (LTE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Welcome to the results presentation of Lighthouse Properties for 31 December 2025. I'd like to start by thanking everyone for joining us here today in person as well as all of you online. I'd like to thank you as well for taking the time. And I think just before I start, just on the picture, this is a center which we acquired as part of the Hammerson rotation process. It was the first acquisition done in early 2024. You see it's called Salera. It's located in Castellon de la Plana. And what you see is a dominant center in a large city, about 200,000 people living in the city behind there. And it's a good example of Lighthouse's strategy since we acquired the mall. Zara closed on the high street that consolidated into this location, and the sales have been growing double digits since then. Just in terms of proceedings today, the agenda, I'll start by giving an overview. I'll cover some of the property KPIs as well as the financial update as well as some of the acquisitions, then I'll run you through some changes that are happening to the Board and then handing over to Kobus, who will take you through the financial results. And then to Razvan Sin, who will be taking you through some of the leasing initiatives, the direct portfolio as well and some of the projects that we are currently busy with as well as the projects completed during 2025. I'll then close out with an outlook. And in terms of questions, we will hold those at the end of the presentation. So anyone in the audience we will pass around the microphone and feel free to ask a question then. Anyone online, there should be a chat box on your screen, which you can type a question into We'll receive those at the end and read them out aloud and also answer them at the end. Again, just before I leave the picture, this is our most recent acquisition, Espacio Mediterraneo. What you see there is a flagship Zara, it's 3,500 square meters. It was completed shortly before we acquired the center. And again, like Salera on the previous slide, here you see Zara, which consolidated into this unit, also closing their units on the high street in favor of this location. Just to start on an overview. And again, speaking to the slide, that's H2O. It looks very different from the last time you would have seen it. A lot has happened here in terms of the refurbishment project that had a big man-made lake. That has since halved in size has become a lot more manageable. We also then created a nice attractive park area. And it's worth noting this center forms the inner city of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, which is quite a new area, which forms part of the greater Madrid metropolitan. And that area itself doesn't have a traditional high street. So this mall serves that purpose. I'll just cover the strategy. It remains unchanged. And I think I'm proud to say we've been quite disciplined in executing and implementing this strategy. We only focus on defensive dominant malls. You saw Salera, it's categorically dominant. It is a very defensive mall. You also saw Espacio Mediterraneo in the previous slide. And that applies across our Iberian portfolio, all our defensive dominant malls. We only focus on cities with strong economic underpins. So these are cities with ports. It will have a strong agricultural underpin, manufacturing. They're usually provincial capitals. And like almost all cities and nodes in Spain, there's a massive tourism boom that's been happening over the last few years. So all of the cities benefit from tourism, and they've been growing nicely since then. Then on the focus on Western Europe, we are focusing here for now and specifically Iberia, and I think this will continue into the foreseeable future. I don't see that changing. And I think the focus going forward will be on our existing portfolio. We've been very busy with our existing portfolio, enhancing those assets, expanding some of them, moving some tenants around, but I think that will continue. And the returns they are actually, at the moment, quite a lot higher than what we're getting on new acquisitions. So the focus is going to be there for now. We are still active in the capital markets looking at new acquisitions. There is a pipeline. Although that's become a lot more competitive. We used to be the only one, if not one of a handful of investors looking at assets and that whole space has become quite crowded. So we've seen cap rates compress from 7% to 8%, where we acquired most of the assets recently to quite well below 7% around that 6.5% level. So we're not willing to overpay for assets. Rates haven't come down substantially over the last year. We've seen a compression in margins, quite a meaningful one, but base rates have stayed more or less the same. Just to take you through the financial highlights for the year. Earnings increase, we're quite proud of the 7.5%. And I think it's worth noting that 7.5% growth was achieved despite the refinancing at Forum Coimbra, which set us back which would have been -- that growth would have been quite well into double-digit territory had we not had to refinance that. There was a legacy loan that was -- had an all-in rate of just over 2%, and that was refinanced to around that 5% level. So that was one of the reasons for that not being in the double-digit territory, but it was obviously guided for at the time. The guidance of [ EUR 0.027 was exceeded, achieving EUR 0.0276 ]. And I think a lot of that growth is also attributable to the rotation out of Hammerson. Those acquisitions were accretive, selling Hammerson at a low yield, buying assets on a higher yield. NAV per share increased by 5.1%. This is because of cap rate compression, and there's also been growth in the income. So that is nice to see. And then LTV 25% to 35.5%. And that is because the recent acquisitions were mostly debt funded, and that's pushed that LTV up to that 35.5% level. I think it's a level we are comfortable at. We think it is the right level, and we intend maintaining our gearing at around here. 2 mall -- 2 new mall acquisitions were completed during the year. We also acquired a grocer, but I'll touch on that a little bit later. And Iberia is now -- continues to grow 87.1% of our total property exposure. I'll take you through the operational highlights for the year. So NPI growth like-for-like, 3.8% at a portfolio level, a very strong performance out of Spain at 5% and then Portugal, 2.5%. Portugal was -- there was a base distortion, call it, from Portugal because in 2024, you would have seen a number of about 6.3% there. It was because in 2024, there was substantial key money collected, which didn't repeat in 2025. So that muted the growth there slightly, but we expect it to normalize going forward. And then France showing a nice recovery, 4.3%. Growth in sales also very strong, particularly strong in Portugal, 8.2% and 5.9% in Spain, giving a portfolio average of 6%. We're still seeing not as strong performance out of France, but still comfortable and well above the inflation level in France at the moment. And growth in footfall, 2.2% across the portfolio and the vacancy has reduced. It was about 2% at the end of 2024, currently 1.3%. So it's come down from 2% to 1.3% and a lot of that is because of the H2O project, which Razvan will take you to. There's been a lot of letting happening there. And then France, that vacancy level has also reduced, contributing to that vacancy decline from 2% to 1.3%. Just an update on the macroeconomic situation. You see the GDP growth rate. Our main markets, Portugal, Spain, performing extremely well, 2.6% GDP growth in Spain and 1.9% in Portugal, which for European economies is exceptional. You look at the euro area average of 0.3%. So they are far outperforming the region. And then France, more or less in line with the euro area average of 0.2%. You see that strength continuing on the retail sales against Spain, 2.9% and Portugal sitting at 3.1%. That's retail sales growth. And you see a bit of pressure on the French economy, and it's been below the euro area average for the last year or so and the euro area average of 1.3%. Inflation has been quite stable, 2.3% in Spain, 1.9% in Portugal. and quite a bit lower in France and with the euro area average of 1.7%. This matters because it does feed into the CPI escalations that we get on our malls. So you will see higher CPI escalations in Spain and Portugal than you will in France. And then lastly, unemployment. Spain has traditionally had quite a high unemployment. It was over 20% at a stage. I think more important than what your unemployment number is, it's the change in unemployment, and you see that continuing to decline. And this is what's giving you that -- or part of the reason you're getting that growth in GDP. It's more people entering the workforce, GDP continuing to grow. You see the same phenomenon in Portugal, although it's quite a lot lower at 5.8%. And then France, the opposite. You see that the economy is under a bit of pressure. Unemployment is climbing gradually 7.9% and that euro area average of 6.3%. This is our most recent acquisition, which we acquired in June. This is Espacio Mediterraneo acquired for EUR 135 million at a yield of 7%. It's a strong center. You see that it's a large footfall, 7.8 million, grew at 2.1% for 2025. Sales growth also strong, growing at 5.6%. The center like most of the centers in Iberia, fully let and this acquisition was financed by a loan secured by an existing asset we have, which is Espai Girones and a loan against the asset itself. And this is the mall, where you've got that new flagship Zara, which you saw in the earlier slides. And we acquired the hypermarket later when we acquired this mall, the hypermarket was not included. It was separately owned. We acquired that later in September for EUR 19.5 million. Then you see the hypermarkets highlighted in green. This is on the ground level of the mall. It's quite a big portion of the mall, but buying the [indiscernible] gives you optionality going forward, gives you more control over the condominium over the service charge budget and where you spend the money and CapEx. And it was the yield was more or less the same as what we acquired the center. And it is a strong performing Carrefour. And it also -- what it also does is it improves your income quality. It adds a blue-chip grocer to your rent roll with a long-term lease. Just an exterior picture of the same mall. Behind that [indiscernible] is the Carrefour Grocer, which I just -- which you just saw. And then in the back, you will see the actual main gallery of the mall. And this mall, I think it's worth noting is a -- it forms part of quite a major retail hub with the retail park, you see a sort of flank sit on the side there, you see [indiscernible] in the background. And then behind you would be the rest of the retail park. But that retail park offers tenants like Leroy Merlin [indiscernible] MediaMarkt. So there's a lot of critical mass in the node. And this retail node services the broader [ Cartagena ] region and is the only substantial offering in the region. Then the first acquisition in the year was Alcala Magna, which was in March. It was acquired at EUR 96.3 million. This is our smallest asset in Iberia, and that has been performing exceptionally well. The acquisition yield was attractive at 7.6%. And you see the footfall, especially for the size, very strong, 7 million people and growing strongly, while footfalls remained relatively flat. The previous year, there was a new Primark in the center. So that was -- it was, I think, double digit at the time of the footfall. But for this year, it was flat because of the base impact and sales growth also strong at 7.6%. And also fully let, we acquired it. There were -- we acquired it fully let and it remains fully let. And during the year, the Zara refurbished and also extended their location, which was agreed as part of the purchase price. So we basically paid for by the seller. It's the exterior picture of Alcala Magna. This -- this center like [ Rivas ] and H2O, which I mentioned earlier, also the city center doesn't have a traditional high street and this center does fulfill that purpose. So you do see a lot of pedestrians walking into the mall from the surrounding residential. Just a brief recap on the evolution of the portfolio during the year. Nothing drastic. Spain has increased because both acquisitions, including the grocer all in Spain. So that's gone from 49.3% to 59.1%. Consequently, France has diluted, so too is Portugal. France is now 12.9% Portugal, 28%. And this is just a graph showing evolution since 2023, since we embarked on that rotation strategy out of Hammerson, our NPI was slightly below EUR 40 million. It's grown by 236% to the current level just over EUR 90 million, and we expect that growth to continue. But I think more importantly is the composition of the NPI, very different to what you saw in 2023 with the main contributors being Spain, as well as Portugal and Slovenia has completely fallen away because of the assets we sold there. So we've now concentrated become quite specialized in Iberia. And interestingly, I think in 2023, our distributable earnings was EUR 1.76 and this year was -- for 2025 was EUR 2.76. So quite a big increase in the distributable earnings, as well as part of that rotation out of Hammerson. I'll just take you through some changes to the Board, and this is H2O, so I'm not going to speak too much to it because Razvan will cover it in detail a little later. And with the Board, we got 2 changes. We've got Kobus van Biljon, who will be stepping down from his role as our Chief Financial Officer. This will be effective from 1 June, and he will be succeeded by Dawie Swarts, who will be joining us on 1 April. So we do have a 2-month overlap period to help with that transition process. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Kobus. He's been with us for 9 years, a bit more, I think, been there virtually since the beginning. It's been great to work with him, has been a major contributor to the business and seen it grow to where it currently is. At the same time, I'd like to welcome Dawie. We're excited to have him on board. He's joining us out of Growthpoint. He comes highly recommended, has a very strong CV, and I'm excited to start working with them And the other change would be Eddie McDonald, who's our Chief Operating Officer. He will be replaced by Laurian Mc Gonigal. He's retiring effective 1 July. And Laurian has been working alongside Eddie for the last couple of years in Malta as part of this transition strategy. And I also would like to take the opportunity to thank Eddie. He's been with us for about 4 years. And Laurian, I'd like to welcome her to the team and congratulate her on the promotion. She has been with us for a couple of years already. And with that, I think for the last time, I'd like to hand over to Kobus to take you through the financial results.

Thank you, Justin. Good morning. The Lighthouse shares in issue increased from the prior year due to scrip distributions and a ZAR 400 million book build during 1H 2025. The distributable earnings per share increased by 7.5% to EUR 0.0276 per share from the prior year, and Lighthouse maintained a 100% payout ratio. Our net asset value per share increased by 5.1% to EUR 0.4488 per share, mainly as a result of the fair value uplift on our investment properties. The loan-to-value ratio increased to 35.5%, as a result of the property acquisitions during 2025, and it's in the Board's target range. This table sets out details of Lighthouse's borrowings. Worth pointing out is the Natixis consortium debt that relates to the French properties. It matures in 1 year, and Lighthouse has commenced discussions with our advisers as well as lenders to refinance the debt. The weighted average loan term at the reporting date was 4.7 years, and the weighted average effective interest rate decreased to 4.96% from the prior year. Lighthouse has a policy of hedging all interest rate risk over the medium term. And then the hedge profiles of the debt substantially match that of the related underlying debt. On 1 January 2025, the Lighthouse Board adopted the EPRA best practice recommendations. For 2025, we have disclosed both the historical metrics as well as the EPRA metrics. The table on the slide indicates the key net asset value, loan-to-value and vacancy metrics on both the historical basis and the EPRA basis, and it indicates that there are no significant differences. With effect from 2026, Lighthouse will only disclose EPRA metrics. Before I hand over, Justin has mentioned that I'm stepping down as CFO. I would like to thank everyone that I've worked with. It's been a tremendous opportunity, and it was a privilege to serve the Board and our shareholders. And I look forward to Lighthouse's continued success. And with that, I'll hand over to Razvan.

Thank you, Kobus. Good morning. Our direct portfolio comprises 12 shopping centers with a total GLA of 520,000 square meters. In terms of visitors, 90 million people visited our malls in 2025. As Justin already mentioned, footfalls improved with 2.2% and sales improved with 6%. Vacancy at 1.3%. This is down from 2% in [Technical Difficulty]. Can you hear me? Portfolio vacancy 1.3%, down from 2% in 2024. Vacancy in Spain is 0.3% and in Portugal, 0.1%. In Spain, most of the vacancy is in H2O. The vacancy of H2O is 1.6%. And here, we are currently finalizing the contract with a major fashion brand. The tenant already has Board's approval. Once the deal is signed, the vacancy will be close to 0 also in H2. So I think 0.3% and 0.1% is very low. I think it's best-in-class, and it says a lot about the quality of our portfolio. In France, vacancy is 5.1%. This is down from around 6% in 2024. We made very good progress. I expect it to stay at this level or maybe to have a slight improvement in 2026. Collection rate is stable at 98.7%. In Iberia, Spain and Portugal, collection rate is 99.4%. In France is 96.3%. This is 96% in France. It's considered a very good collection rate. We rotated a large part of the tenants and the improved collection rate is the result of this tenant rotation. Average occupancy cost is 10.6%. This is low. It gives us sufficient room to increase the rents when the leases expire, so we can apply more pressure there. Weighted average unexpired lease term, 7.3 years. Most of the leases are signed with durations of between 5 and 10 years with the anchor tenants having a longer duration. Indexation in 2025, indexation in Spain was 2.8%; Portugal, 2.39% and France, 1.5%. For 2026, we expect indexation of 2.9% in Spain, Portugal, 2% and France below 1% probably around 0.5%. The 10 largest tenants by income represent 31% of the total rental income. These are all major companies. Most of them are listed with strong balance sheets. We don't have a major exposure to a single brand or a single group of brands. Inditex is our largest tenant with 11.5%, followed by Primark with about 5% and JD Sports. Inditex has 7 brands. If we would extract Zara from the group, which is their flagship brand, Zara would be the main tenant right in front of Primark. Performance metrics and the leasing activity. In 2025, we signed 165 lease agreements for a total GLA of approximately 50,000 square meters. Out of this, 71 on renewals were renewals and 94 were new lease agreements. Average rental reversion, 5.1%. I was mentioning below the low occupancy cost at 10.6%. This allowed us to increase the rents with 5.1%, which excludes indexation. Indexation is applied as it usually is on indexation date. On the right part of the slide, the split by type of activity, taking into consideration the rental income, fashion represents 36%, followed by food and beverage, personal care and sports. Strong performance were accessories and jewelry, food specialists and fashion. So fashion improved -- the sales in fashion grew with 5.1% and in electronics, also 5.1%. Low performers last year were leisure, mainly due to the cinemas with minus 4%. We know that cinemas were suffering last year due to lack of content and blockbuster movies and sports with minus 1%. In this segment, sports and shoes are coming after a long period of exceptional performance. So sales per square meter are still strong. But -- and some of the brands like Decimas, Foot Locker suffered, whether they were flat or slightly negative with JD Sports still performing well. Leasing activity, this is a picture with the new JD Sports that opened in Espacio Mediterraneo in May last year. At the core of our business are the tenants. Some of the best indicators for the performance of the mall are the occupancy rate, the occupancy cost for the effort rate, but also the quality of the tenant mix and the strength of our tenants. Something that I want to mention related to leasing is that we have a direct relationship with the tenants. We use the strength of the portfolio in our negotiations. And the majority of the deals that you see here have been negotiated directly by our team with the tenants. I will not mention all the deals on the top row are some of the brands that extended and refurbished in 2025. Some that stand out are the deals with Lefties. Lefties is a very strong performer in Portugal and Spain. They will also start expansion in France, probably this year, they will open the first store. They relocated in Coimbra, increased surface from 900 to 1,600 square meters, which allowed us also to relocate and increase the size of JD Sports. JD took over the old unit of Lefties. Lefties is also currently refurbishing the store in Salera. They will open in April, the latest concept. Other brands that consolidated last year, Zara with 3 locations, Primark, Stradivarius with 3 locations, JD Sports and New Yorker in France and Docks Vauban. On the second row, some of the brands that opened new stores and brands that signed new lease agreements in 2025. I will start with France. The leasing is more challenging there. We signed 2 lease agreements with New Yorker. These are both large stores, more than 1,500 square meters. They will open this year in Dock 76 and in Rivetoile. Also in France, Darty. Darty, this is the market leader in electronics. They opened a flagship in Dock 76. Other brands, Adidas opened 2 locations in France and Pull and Bear opened a large store in Docks Vauban. In Spain, Cortefiel signed 2 lease agreements in Salera and Espai Girones. And also in Spain and Portugal, we introduced 2 premium brands. This is Scalpers and Rossellimac. Rossellimac is the upper premium reseller. Scalpers is just opened in Forum Montijo and Rossellimac opens in Salera and in Espacio Mediterraneo. Moving to projects. Projects are expansions or refurbishments or tenant rotations with significant CapEx allocation. Usually, it would be an expansion of a shopping center with new tenants. Across the portfolio, we have rights to build close to 30,000 square meters of new GLA on top of the extensions that are currently under construction. This 30,000 square meters represent 6% of our total GLA. This is the size of a medium shopping center, and we are working on several initiatives to take advantage of this extra rights. We have 2 major projects under construction. One is the extension of Forum Coimbra and the other one is the extension of Espai Girones. In Coimbra, we are rightsizing Primark and also we are extending all the Inditex brands. Inditex is expected to open by the end of this month, yes, in March this year. And Primark will not close the store. They are extending, but they keep the store operated. At Coimbra, we also start in April, the works for a medical center. We should hand over the unit in Q3, and the medical center will open in January next year. At Espai Girones, works are ongoing to extend the mall, and we will almost double the size of Zara. This extension also allows us to introduce a new brand [indiscernible]. This picture, you can see the newly refurbished food court in H2O. The largest development in 2025 was the refurbishment of H2O, which was completed in December. At the exterior, the lake was reduced from 12,000 to 6,000 square meters. We recovered this part of the lake, and we built a new park. We created a new connection with the large retail park, which is located right across the road. So H2O has a surface of 53,000 square meters, but the node is more than 100,000. And right across, there is a large retail park. We created a new connection that you can see here. It was very good to see when we visited the mall now in February that a lot of people were using this connection and a lot of people were -- a lot of the visitors were enjoying the park. At the interior, we replaced the floor in the entire mall. We redesigned the food court. We installed new LED lightening -- lighting. We replaced the ballast traits with glass, and we improved the HVAC system. I didn't do anything. Okay. Thank you. We prepared a short movie to show the how H2O changed in 2025. Hopefully, it will work. [Video Presentation] Okay. The pictures here, you can see the new lake, newly refurbished food court on the ground floor, new floor, new LED lighting as well on the first floor and the new glass ballast traits. Despite the heavy works, the footfall improved with 7.1%. So last 12 months footfalls were close to 9 million. The re-tenanting of the East Plaza in Salera, what we call the East Plaza, it's a Plaza, it's an atrium that was the colder part of the mall. We replaced 3 underperforming tenants, about 2,000 square meters. These were Sports Direct, United Colors of Benetton and AW Lab. We replaced them with 2 strong brands from the Inditex Group with Bershka and Stradivarius. Both brands were actually overperforming. Stradivarius was doing more than -- sales of more than 10,000 square meters per square meter per year. So Bershka increased from 700 to 1,200; Stradivarius from 400 to 800. And the relocation of these 2 brands allowed us to introduce 3 brands on the old locations of Bershka and Stradivarius. Cortefiel took over the unit of Bershka and the old unit of Stradivarius was split between Scalpers and an Apple premium reseller. The yield of this project was close to 11%, and the project was completed in February this year. Alcala Magna, the extension of Zara, Zara opened a new flagship store in October. This is coming after Primark opened in 2024. The investment for the Zara extension was included in the acquisition price. So works were performed after we acquired the mall, but the cost was covered in the initial price. Alongside with Zara, Inditex refurbished Bershka and Stradivarius, and we opened Starbucks and KFC. So the occupancy of Alcala Magna is 100%. And with this, I hand back to you, Justin.

Thank you, Razvan. Sounds good. Okay. Before we wrap up with questions, I will go through an outlook showing you where we're going to -- where we see ourselves over the next year and the foreseeable future. We're going to remain disciplined in our investment approach. So we're going to remain opportunistic. We -- like I mentioned earlier, we are looking at opportunities, but I think the pace of acquisitions that we've seen over the last 2 years will subside somewhat. So -- and then just in terms of growth, there's a lot of growth already embedded in the portfolio. Iberia is performing well. The sales growth that we saw in '24, '25, we're expecting to continue into 2026. And 2026 will have some, call it, non-organic growth because of the full year impact of 2 of the acquisitions that was Alcala Magna and Espacio Mediterraneo. And off the back of that, we are expecting distributable earnings per share of EUR 0.0295, and that gives you a growth of about 6.9%. And I think that concludes our presentation. We'll then hand over to questions. If anyone has in the audience. If not, we can read out questions online.

Shall I start reading out questions?

Okay. [ Kobus read ]?

What drove the valuation decline in the French malls?

Yes. So France cap rates did go up there, unlike Iberia. Obviously, the overall impact because France is quite small within our portfolio was overshadowed, but French cap rates did increase a bit. And then even though NPI did increase, what did decrease was ERVs. So future letting assumptions down the line. When you relet in the DCF, the reletting numbers were decreased, which results in a decline in the valuation.

Then I think one for Razvan. Can you provide more color on the French [indiscernible] in 2H '25?

Can you hear me? Yes. So vacancy is at 5.1%. I think we will stay at that level, maybe improve a little bit. We have some -- we did some great progress last year. I think we will continue also next year, but now we have to implement the 2 New Yorkers and the deals that were already signed so that we have to open these ones. I expect some of the vacancy to delist, but France was quite a roller coaster. So I know that we will lease some of the spaces, but I don't know if we will have also some surprises as we had in the past because we know that the French economy is suffering a little bit now. So I think the only thing that I can say right now that we expect to be at this level of 5% also in 2026.

All right. Razvan, another one for you. If you could just perhaps highlight again what your indexation expectations are for 2026?

It was 2.9% for Spain, 2% for Portugal and then France, probably 0.5%.

All right. And then just another follow-up. If you could just highlight again what the potential asset management opportunities are across the portfolio.

Yes. We're looking at several. We still have a lot on the table to deliver to finish all the ongoing extensions and projects that we have, but we have more coming. We are looking at using this rights -- these rights to build more GLA. So we are actually looking to do some extensions in the future. And yes, we will announce them once we have the lease agreements signed.

All right. And then a question for Justin. If you could just provide some thoughts on the balcony portfolio that's on the market.

Yes. I mean that's under strict non-disclosure agreement there. So there's not much I can say. I mean it's -- I'll probably repeat what's in the press and publicly available. It's a big portfolio, 8 assets owned by the Balcony fund. I mean, it's a good portfolio. It's regarded as fairly blue chip but very sizable. So you're talking -- and again, this comes from the press. The press was speculating a valuation of about EUR 1.6 billion. So it's big. Yes. But I think we need to tread carefully. There's not much more I can say other than that.

And that's the questions that I've noted.

Cool. I think then that wraps up the presentation, and thank you all for coming. Any other questions, feel free to reach out to myself, Razvan or Kobus. And I'll close out with that. Thank you very much. Goodbye.